In recent years, the insulation and air-tightnesslevels of newly constructed houses in Japanhave been improved for purpose of energysaving. However, a reduced design of airpermeability (i.e. a high level of air-tightness)will provide insufficient air through infiltrationresulting in a significant and negative impact ona social problem of sick house syndrome. TheJapanese Building Standard has been revised toreduce the concentration of Formaldehydewhich is considered to be one of the maincauses of sick house syndrome.

Air tightness is an important property ofbuilding envelopes. It is a key factor indetermining infiltration and related wallperformanceproperties such as indoor airquality, maintainability and moisturebalance. Air leakage in U.S. housesconsumes roughly 113 of the HVAC energybut provides most of the ventilation used tocontrol TAQ. The Lawrence BerkeleyNational Laboratory has been gatheringresidential air leakage data from manysources and now has a database of morethan 100,000 raw measurements.

This paper describes the history and background of the ventilation requirements. Thepaper starts with an overview of existinginternational requirements. An analysis is madeabout the reasons and goals for ventilation.Ventilation strategies are discussed .The advisedstrategy is to ventilate only for unavoidablesources such as people in rooms and theirunavoidable activities, for instance cleaning,maintenance and personal care like cooking,bathing and showering. The history is of therequirements as well as the underlying studiesare described an discussed.

The author had participated IEAIECBCS Annexprojects since 1987, starting from Annex 16 forBEMS, ending at Annex 40 for Commissioning.I used to recognize how this line of continualset-up of subjects to optimize HVAC design andmaintenance through system simulation, BEMSmeasurements, fault detection and diagnosis andbuilding optimization technologies, which ledthe way to building commissioning, had beenwell designed just as by god's hand.

A radiant heating applied to floor, so called'Ondol', is a traditional heating method in Koreaand has been widely used. The form of theOndol has been modified so that it can beapplied to modem residential buildings.However, the Ondol system has limitation inkeeping comfortable indoor-environment,because the Ondol is able to control floortemperature only.

Conventional air-conditioning control in a roomassumes perfect diffusion of temperature in theroom, and relies on a temperature sensorinstalled on the wall or ceiling of the room, or inthe return duct. Air-conditioning is controlled sothat the sensor temperature becomes equal tothe sensor-set temperature ("set temperature").In reality, however, since thermal stratificationoccurs in a room, the set temperature is oftennot attained in an occupied zone that should beproperly air-conditioned. This may result inexcessive cooling.

In the desiccant dehumidifier using adsorbentsuch as silica gel and zeolite, outdoor moist airis dehumidified in adsorbent. On the otherhands, it is necessary for the adsorbent whichbecomes moist by dehumidifying outdoor air tobe dried (regenerated).

Recently, supplying glass space like atrium isbeing extended widely for introducing naturallight into a building, improving rest roomfunctions and having a pleasant workenvironment. However, some problems canoccur in atrium such as overheating andexcessive vertical temperature difference duringthe summer time, making people feel unpleasantand increase air conditioning load.This study targets that the air conditioning loadaccording to characteristics of the atrium'svarious windows can be expected throughbuilding energy performance evaluationanalysis.

This paper describes the merit of daylighting bycomparing the physical and psychologicalaspects of light and heat radiation. We preparedthree rooms: direct lighting with fluorescentlamps; indirect lighting with incandescentlamps; and daylighting alone. We conductedphysical measure-ment associated with light andheat, together with subjective experiments interms of luminous and thermal sensations.The measurement was done in August, 2006,and also in December, 2007. In summer, the airtemperature of the room with daylighting alonewas lower than two other rooms with electriclighting.

This paper discusses the possibility of asimple solar hot water pre-heating system fordomestic hot water supply. In Japan, the fossilfuel use for hot water supply amounts to about30% of the total in residential buildings. The useof conventional solar hot water heaters has beendecreased draniatically over the last 30 years,although the extensive use should have beenexpected. They are regarded to be notnecessarily cheap and moreover theirappearance has not been preferred by quite afew building designers.